On vacation: Way down yonder in the valley

Horses in a valley: detail from a Chinese scroll.
DW collection.

 

This is a lullaby my mother, Martha Jordan, was sung as a baby in Ozark, Alabama, before 1920 -- a lullaby that she sang to me, that I sang to my daughters and to my grandchildren.  As happens with folksongs, it is a patchwork of other songs.  The "pretty little horses" are found in innumerable variants, especially in Kentucky and Tennessee; the "ol' black birds" are found in the "Twa' Corbies"; and a North Carolina variant was collected by the Library of Congress in 1947 (A8).  I have transcribed it with final consonants, but sometime she sang it with Ol' and singin' which is how I sang it three years ago at a Folklore Festival, and my preference -- it makes for a gentler sound.

* * * * * *

Go to sleep, little baby,

Don't the boogers gonna get you.

Ducks in the pond,

The geese are flying over

All the pretty little horses

Way down yonder in the valley.

Old black birds

A' picking out his eyes,  [edited sometimes to "singing all the day"]

Poor little thing cried "Mama!"

Mama went away

And told me to stay,

And take good care of the baby.

When she came back

She brought a piece of pie

And gave it every bit to the baby,

Way down yonder in the valley.